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Compulsory manumission

Chapter 2: ADVERTISEMENT.
By Alexander McDonnell
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History - BritishPolitics

About This Book

The pamphlet argues against government-enforced manumission, examining parliamentary proceedings and colonial administration to contend that compulsory emancipation would violate property rights, undermine the plantation economy, and produce practical harms for enslaved people by removing incentives to cultivate, weakening family arrangements, and promoting disorder; it analyses legal objections including mortgage law, models cited as precedents, and fiscal consequences for planters, and warns that forced measures could increase unrest and imperil colonial security while urging alternative, gradual ameliorative policies and holding ministers accountable for imprudent coercion.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,

Stamford-Street.

It is fearful odds against a writer, when, at each stage of his task, he is liable to encounter prejudice as an upholder of a condition of society so repugnant to the feelings of Englishmen as that of slavery.

Greatly must those odds be increased, if a disposition be shown by Government, hitherto believed impartial, to array the weight of its authority against him.

But it is hoped that prejudice will not preclude inquiry. In the following pages it will be found, that in setting forth the actual state of the West India Question, the real and permanent welfare of the slaves occupies a conspicuous place.

In regard to the display of power, let us conclude, that when a measure can be demonstrated as positively bad, such disapprobation will be manifested by the independent and disinterested members of the legislature, as must exercise a salutary control over the counsels of ministers.

Under this impression, the following pages are respectfully submitted to the consideration of the members of both Houses of Parliament.